Adding events with UTC start/end times

Program and version you use to access Google Calendar: Firefox 5.0 Labs: None

Hello,

I am an amateur radio operator. Since us hams are able to contact people around the world, we all use the UTC/GMT time zone so there's no confusion as to what time things are at. We also have contests that will start and end at a certain time UTC. I have been having problems putting these contests on my Google calendar. Within the last year the "time zone" link appeared that let me change the time of my event to "London (GMT + 00:00)" and I was having no problems. Now since we "sprung ahead" an hour a few months ago all the times are an hour early. My reasoning for this is because my time zone, Pacific, was GMT -8 and is now GMT -7. Is there a fix for this that I am missing, or a problem with the Google calendar? I have tried searching the forums for an answer but I'm not having much luck.

-Andrew

2011-07-05

UPDATE JULY 4, 2011

After playing around in Google Calendar for over an hour I finally found
the answer to my own question. Surely there must be another way, but
this works. So... for anyone else who may read this post:

Go into 'Calendar Settings' in the upper right of the calendar page

Under
the 'General' tab in the "Your current time zone" section, select the
'Display all time zones' checkbox and then click on "Show an additional
time zone"

Scroll through the list to find (GMT+00:00) GMT (no daylight saving) and then click 'Save'

Now, when you go to add an event in the calendar you can click "Time zone" and GMT will be in your list!

Hmmm... I guess the reason behind this is, that London also switched to DST, so that your "London +0" isn't in sync with UTC anymore. And as GCal asks you for a country first when you select a timezone, there probably isn't a neutral timezone available. (that would be an actual oversight...)

I have a similar problem; I'd like to create a recurring event that's always at 0000 UTC and shows up at the appropriate local time on my calendar (for me, either 7pm or 8pm), but the London (UK) time zone switches in and out of DST as well and is thus unsuitable for this.

For now, my solution is to use the Reykjavik (Iceland) time zone, which has been on UTC+0 with no DST since 1968. I still don't like this, though, since although unlikely, Iceland could decide to change its rules at any time. Could Google provide an extra "country" to the drop-down list called "UTC" that just resolves to pure UTC, no matter what?

They actually list a timezone under Iceland that is GMT (No Daylight Savings) so I assume that will always be GMT regardless of what Iceland does, but Google really should find a better placement than putting it under Iceland.